Businesses racing faster and faster to put their data and applications into multiple cloud services will soon have to figure out how to keep an eye on it all. Start thinking about the hundreds of users, the dozens of accounts, and the handful of different cloud services that don’t always speak the same language, and the job of monitoring and securing it all quickly gets complicated.This is the problem that Brendan Hannigan and Sandy Bird are attacking with their New York-based company Sonrai Se... Tags: Google, Amazon, Deals, Startups, Open Source, Cloud, New York, Microsoft, Identity, Azure, Trends, Tech, Cisco, It, Cybersecurity, Vc

Diabetes drugs are Eli Lilly’s bread and butter, but the pharmaceutical giant hasn’t lost its appetite for cancer drugs. It grabbed hold of a few more this week by betting $8 billion on Loxo Oncology.Loxo (NASDAQ: LOXO) has made a name for itself by becoming one of just two companies ever to earn an FDA approval for a drug that targets a tumor’s DNA fingerprint, no matter where in the body that cancer is found. The drug, larotrectinib, targets rare tumor abnormalities known as NTRK fusions. The... Tags: Deals, Startups, Ipo, Cancer, Trends, Medicare, SEC, Fda, National, GlaxoSmithKline, Allergan, Shire, Biotech, Medical Device, Postpartum Depression, Bernie Sanders

A bunch of startups started 2019 off on the right foot taking big checks cut by investors that continue the boom from 2018. Read on for more.—Weather forecast company ClimaCell says its high-resolution data is now available in 40 countries, including India. In October, the Boston-based startup raised $45 million, pushing its total venture capital haul to $65 million, and since then, it added another $5 million from GXP Investments, an arm of Kansas power utility Great Plains Energy, and Nationa... Tags: Deals, Startups, Boston, India, Israel, Trends, Tech, Mit, Bill Gates, Venture Capital, Cambridge, Kansas, National Grid, Worcester, Affectiva, Wells Fargo

Auto technology startup ClearMotion says its active suspension system promising buttery-smooth rides on bumpy terrain is ready for prime time.The Boston-area business says it raised a $115 million Series D funding round led by Franklin Templeton Investments and it is working with a handful of automotive manufacturers to commercialize the product.ClearMotion developed a car suspension system it likens to noise-cancelling for potholes and the like that was based on research audio technology compa... Tags: Deals, Microsoft, Boston, Trends, Tech, Mit, Vc, Automotive, Data Science, Venture Capital, Machine Learning, Mobility, Birmingham, Bose, Qualcomm, BRIDGESTONE

Bristol-Myers Squibb has agreed to acquire Celgene in a deal that would create one of the largest biopharma organizations in the world and send ripples throughout the life sciences sector.Bristol (NYSE: BMY) on Thursday morning inked a deal to buy Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) in a deal that values the Summit, NJ, drugmaker at $74 billion, or $102.43 per share. Celgene shareholders will get $50 in cash and one Bristol share for each Celgene share they own. They’ll also get one tradeable contingent val... Tags: Deals, Trends, Merck, M&a, Fda, National, Bristol, Biotech, Life Sciences, Celgene, Bristol-myers Squibb, KEYTRUDA, CVR, Opdivo, Orencia, Revlimid

2018 was a year of ups and downs for the business and technology community. It was a year of big exits—both IPOs and acquisitions—for tech and life sciences companies. Venture funding remained strong, but more money went to fewer (and later-stage) companies overall. As the year winds down, we’re reflecting on the big innovation trends and developments that will carry over to next year.Storylines in various sectors helped shape the overall narrative in 2018. Cell and gene therapies, cancer immun... Tags: Deals, Startups, Technology, Cloud Computing, Trends, Tech, IPOs, It, People, Cybersecurity, Analysis, Vc, Software, Bitcoin, Bill Gates, Innovation

In mid-2018, Tom Bogan was the leader of business planning software company Adaptive Insights as it planned its own next steps. The Palo Alto, CA-based company was on the point of raising about $115 million in a June IPO that would have set its market value at around $705 million, according to PitchBook.But like Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate,” the big enterprise software company Workday lured Adaptive Insights away from the IPO altar with a more attractive deal—a $1.55 billion acquisition off... Tags: Deals, Startups, Cloud, Internet, Entrepreneurship, Ipo, Funding, San Francisco, Trends, Tech, Web, It, Excel, Software, Data Science, Innovation

A new and unconventional power storage startup is preaching the gospel of salt and antifreeze as the long-sought answer to how to bottle up renewable electricity from intermittent solar and wind projects.Malta, based in Cambridge, MA, announced today it has graduated from Alphabet’s X, the Moonshot Factory—where it was known as Project Malta—and is heading off into the world with a $26 million Series A funding round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the climate change fund led by Bill Gates.... Tags: Google, Deals, Startups, Boston, Trends, Tech, Renewable Energy, Launch, X, Bill Gates, Venture Capital, Wind, Clean Energy, Solar, Cleantech, Battery

One of the leading contenders in the A.I. chip race, Graphcore, announced Thursday it pulled down $200 million in a Series D fundraising round that set its valuation at $1.7 billion.The Bristol, UK-based startup, founded in 2016, has now secured a total of more than $300 million in financing from venture capital firms and other investors including Microsoft and the corporate venture arms of BMW and Dell Technologies.Graphcore’s big haul is a notable milestone in the recent revival of investor i... Tags: Google, Deals, Startups, Facebook, Hardware, Microsoft, Internet, Entrepreneurship, Softbank, Funding, Samsung, San Francisco, Trends, Tech, It, Mit

It turns out we might have been making lithium-ion batteries all wrong this whole time.That’s at least what Cambridge, MA-based battery startup 24M says, now having developed what it sees as the “right” way.The company, a spinoff of A123 Systems, announced today it raised a $21.8 million Series D round led by Japanese companies Kyocera Group and Itochu. Long quiet, 24M is now happy to explain how over the past few years it hacked the battery’s conventional manufacturing process.24M says its big... Tags: Deals, Startups, Boston, Trends, Tesla, Vc, Electric Vehicles, Venture Capital, Cambridge, Clean Energy, Cleantech, Factory, Kyocera, Battery, A123 Systems, Itochu

Pharmaceutical industry critics lament the cost of rare disease drugs, but some of the steepest price hikes have come on widely used insulin.The patent holder, the University of Toronto, gave companies the right to manufacture insulin. But the university also allowed them to patent the improvements they made, which enabled them to slap higher prices on each new version.In the nearly 100 years since insulin’s discovery, no generic version has become available in the U.S. to offer competitive pri... Tags: Deals, Startups, Breast Cancer, Washington, Ipo, Cancer, Trends, Investing, Diabetes, Schizophrenia, Venture Capital, Addiction, Fda, National, Novartis, Biotech

Machine learning startups are trying to establish a deeper presence on Wall Street.The latest move comes from Aiera (pronounced like “era”), a New York- and Boston-based company that announced today it took in $3.5 million in seed funding. Flybridge Capital Partners led the investment and was joined by Macquarie Group, Innovation Endeavors, Fin Venture Capital, and WGI Group.Aiera, which stands for “artificially intelligent equity research analyst,” wants to use A.I. technologies to help active... Tags: Amazon, Deals, Startups, Facebook, New York, Jobs, Finance, Wall Street, Boston, Trends, Tech, It, Vc, Software, Automation, Credit Suisse